"An unfamiliar... yet familiar ceiling...?"
After finishing a performance in front of 250,000 spectators, the sight that met my eyes when I opened them again was something deeply familiar, yet strangely alien.
"This is my studio apartment...?"
The image of the room where I used to live alone—a memory that had been growing hazy—began to burn vividly into my vision.
Seeing that the arrangement of my belongings hadn't changed and that dust had settled thickly over everything, it seemed a significant amount of time had passed since the day I was hit by that truck.
"Was it all just a dream...?"
I was performing in front of a quarter-million people just a moment ago, and now I'm back in my apartment, surrounded by Korean text?
Unable to process the reality of the situation, I pulled my smartphone out of my pocket and tried to turn it on. The battery was completely dead, as if to prove exactly how much time had slipped away.
Tracing back through my blurred memories, I eventually managed to find a charger and plugged it in. With a heavy sigh, I collapsed into the chair in front of my computer.
"No, seriously, what is going on?"
—Bzzzzzt!! Bzzzzzt!!
What pulled me out of my contemplation was the relentless, overwhelming barrage of phone notifications.
[KakaoTalk: 999+ unread messages.]
[999+ Missed Calls]
[Message: You crazy bastard!! What the hell do you think you're doing, just vanishing like that? You're fired, you son of a bitch!]
"Yeah, this is more like my life. At least this feels straightforward."
This was my original life. A mundane existence where I was pushed around and barely had a proper place to lay my head, yet a life where I never let go of my dreams despite it all.
.
.
.
.
.
Since I had been gone for so long, the first person I met was, naturally, my best friend. That meeting inevitably led to a round of drinks.
I usually had a high tolerance for alcohol, but since I was sharing glasses with a lifelong friend I hadn't seen in forever, it was only natural that I failed to pace myself.
"No! Seriously!! Do I look like the kind of guy who'd bullshit you about something like this?!"
As a result, reaching a state of total intoxication and spilling my guts with drunken sincerity was an inevitable progression.
"I'm telling you, I think I went to the world of that 'Oshi no Ko' anime!!"
My mind was reeling so much that my memories kept slipping, but as my friend listened, his expression remained unchanged, as if he already knew everything.
If someone who had disappeared for over two years suddenly returned and said something like this, the normal reaction would be to worry about their mental state or treat them like a total lunatic. Yet, he remained perfectly calm.
Then again, we had seen the absolute best and worst of each other, so maybe he was just rolling with it.
"I started a band there... I fell in love... I even performed on a stage in front of 250,000 people... you know?"
"......."
"But I guess it was a dream."
Was it because we were the kind of friends who shared our most pathetic moments? Even though I was incapacitated by the alcohol, I found myself pouring out my heaviest burdens to him.
"But there were still so many reasons why I should have stayed in that dream. I had so many responsibilities there."
My brain was pickled in alcohol, making my memories fuzzy, but the expression on my face at that moment must have been a sight to behold.
"I still had so much left to settle... I had to apologize to Ai, too..."
"......"
"I think I missed the life where I wasn't bound by anything when I was over there... but can I really just bury those memories and move on?"
"......."
"But you know better than anyone that I'm not the kind of person who's numb enough to just bury memories like that."
"I know. The version of you I know is the type to suffer until he finally just lets go of himself."
Perhaps I even grabbed my friend's shoulder and sobbed uncontrollably.
"What should I do?"
"Just go back. Your family is over there, not here, isn't it?"
How much time had passed? My friend, who had been quietly responding while emptying bottle after bottle, asked me a question at the very moment my sense of time became a blur.
"In the end, do you want to go back?"
"I can't just leave that girl behind... How could I ever leave her..."
The moment I finished those words, the thin film of my consciousness, which had been barely hanging on, finally snapped.
"Then you have to go back. And you better do it right this time, you bastard."